Source: Jaap Buitendijk / Jaap Buitendijk
Like it or loathe it, we’re currently living in a Barbie world — literally! Hit up your favorite retailer, and we can almost guarantee they’ve got a pink-themed collab on display. Heck, typing the term “barbie” into Google right now will give your entire computer screen a pink hue. In short, moviegoers globally haven’t been able to get enough of the era-defining plastic toy doll in recent weeks following her official Hollywood debut last month (July 21) with the world premiere of Greta Gerwig’s long-awaited live-action film,
Barbie.
Well, not everyone.
Dwight Watkins, a University of Baltimore lecturer and fellow editorial brother in media by way of Salon.com, recently penned a heartfelt essay on why he and his infant daughter won’t be one of the millions heading out to see
Barbie this summer. His reasoning is simple: too much “whiteness.”
RELATED: Learn The History of Black Barbie Dolls
Watkins wrote in his first-person op-ed for
Salon that
Barbie had “one of the whitest trailers” he’d ever seen, which immediately made him, as he put it, “cautious of what I expose my daughter to.” Elaborating further, he went on to add, “She’s too young to understand the complexities of gender, so how do you even begin to open the door to conversations about race and how movies and commercials in America act like white people have a monopoly on beauty?”
Read up more on Dwight Watkins’ beef with
Barbie below, via
Salon:
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“As a family, we must be intentional when we buy Black dolls, books with Black queens and princesses and allow her to watch cartoons like ‘Gracie’s Corner,’ ‘OmoBerry’ and ‘Karma’s World.’ And no, we are not teaching her to only connect with Black art; it’s just that everything white is always available and at the forefront of everything. You don’t have to search for white content; it’s already in your face.
I never heard a white person say, ‘The representation was poor; I just don’t see myself in the art,’ yet Black people and people of color deal with this daily. America intentionally and unintentionally shoves whiteness down our throats every day, every minute, every second, and there’s not much we can do about it, other than thoughtfully curating a child’s experience.”
He ended his short thesis by doubling down on efforts to “religiously” teach his three-year-old that Black is beautiful. “Avoiding films like
Barbie is a part of that teaching,” he concluded, and certainly there’s some validity in his way of thinking. For many years, Barbie and Mattel received flack for its lack of diversity on many levels, including promoting unrealistic body proportions, making the “Coke bottle body” a beauty standard and, yes, helping to define society’s status quo as a woman with long blonde hair and baby blue eyes. Even the Black Christie doll didn’t do much to balance things out, which made the appearance of
Issa Rae as one of the titular dolls in
Barbie feel both very welcomed and very long overdue.
Source: Warner Bros. / Barbie The Movie
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures / Warner Bros. Pictures
So, let us know: is #BarbieSoWhite, or do you only see the world in pink? Sound off with your thoughts, and take a look at how some reacted to this viral Barbie story on social media below:
